Met my current girlfriend via match. Working 24 hours shifts made dating a bit of a hassle. Never liked clubs anyway.

I got my sister to write my profile. Quite effective in getting winks and mails, but I suspect some/all were suspicious that I'd made up the profile. I very rarely made first contact. Usually waited till I'd received a wink or mail.

Regarding lying about height - why would you do such a thing? It's going to be startlingly obvious when/if you meet. Except in my case when I added half an inch because there was no option for 6' 1/2" :-)

Regarding salary, mine was on there, but I changed jobs and never updated it, so I actually make more than my profile said. But thanks to student loans etc, I'm technically broke.

Having said that, and as mentioned by a previous poster, women seem to be incredibly specific about everything. Sometimes I reckon the womens are a little too demanding. "Thou shalt be 5'10" or taller, with a six pack, under 35, earning 210k, with two homes and an ability to sweep me off to exotic destinations on a whim."

Could someone also explain why there are some women who write their profile in sms message style? "Want 2 hve drinks 2nite?" for example. I hated this, as there is sufficient server space for grammatically correct profiles. Spelling mistakes also annoy me. Fair enough with an instant message where a mis-key is easily done, but a profile takes time to write. Surely you'd run it through a spell check before posting it.

Oh yeah, and my headline was "Will evict spiders for you".

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"Here's how you run a marathon. Step 1: You start running. Step 2: There is no step 2." - Barney (How I Met Your Mother)

ok, I have to admit I think the whole "When you stop looking and you will meet the right one" ALWAYS seemed ridiculous to me...my advice to single people is dont take this advice...dont be passive...get out there in groups of people and be playful!....(and I am not suggesting you go out and act NEEDY...thats death in the dating world)

I speak from some experience...I was single for 19 years...I was always looking....I got out there and had fun with the women I met...I flirted and was playful with women I was attracted to...(and even ones I wasnt...because its fun)...I never knew where things were going....perhaps a few dates...perhaps a lifetime....

they way I figured it, every women I was interacting with was on a first date with me....they just didnt know it....

the more you do this, the more choice YOU will have in who you might want to ask out...I was wanting to meet the person who I would be COMPELLED to be married to...I did go out and date people who I had a great time with but knew I would not want to be married to...but I wanted to have fun also....

I met my wife by taking the initiative....not sitting back...we had fun, flirty, playful conversations...

I dumped match.com very quickly....I thought it was a waste of time...go into any room at work and look at the people around you....any of these might be someone on Match...its hard to tell much on line....I needed to SEE the person...(Although, I dont deny this works for some people)

I always figured women need to see you, hear you, smell you to see if they FEEL attracted...

you cant be shy but you cant be a dick...get out with groups of people and play!....

my advice to single men...and women....get out and BE PLAYFUL! even if you dont meet "The One" tonight you might have a good time.....(and you never know who might be watching from the corner and thinking "damn, I would like to meet her/him)

Oh I would agree. Back when I cared and thought I wanted a mate I flirted and had fun everywhere I went. Sometimes I still do, but not with any sense or thought of actually following through at all. Used to be I was more open to the idea of follow through for the more individual date. That's just me though. Anyone that IS interested in finding "the one" (or at least the one for now) should most certainly be willing to put themselves out there and just go meet people. I also agree that face to face meetings do a much better job of determining attraction than any profile and picture. Online dating sites might provide the opportunity to meet people you'd not otherwise have met though, and that is a good thing.

(and, I get so tired of being told "oh, you'll meet someone!" just because I'm not looking. When you stop looking, you're more likely to ignore the possibilities out there. Seriously.)

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There is no justice, there is only me. -- Death

One of the reasons why I'm doing online dating again is that the dating pool in my circle of friends, big surprise that it is mostly triathletes, has dwindled a lot. I still have a few prospects but there aren't tons and tons of prospects that are single, in my age range, and I find interesting. Online dating is opening new doors for me like you said and that is good. The problem with online dating for guys is that if I knock on 20 doors, 3-4 of the doors may get cracked to see who's knocking, and maybe 1-2 will actually let me in.

I'm trying this out again for about 3 months and I'm not being too serious about it.

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http://trainingoferic.blogspot.com/

ironically, my wife just emailed me this quote from her Starbucks cup a few minutes ago...

“I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stumped by this for many years. And then I realized, you just say, “Hi”. They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word."

Yeah, after a while that does become the problem within the known circle and why internet dating can be useful. In some cases, if done right, you might meet someone that isn't right for you but through friendship with her you may find the one that is. I know one fellow that put an ad in the personals once, a friend of mine read and responded to it and, while THEY didn't hit it off romantically, she did bring him around to meet a bunch of others and he did hit it off with one of the other women. Sadly, the one he hit it off with is psycho and after about 5 years it ended with her running off with some other married man... but he's happy NOW, anyway!

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There is no justice, there is only me. -- Death

I actually did this the other day. I was at Starbucks getting a cup of deliciously evil coffee, and the barista was pretty cute. She dyed her hair red (hot) and it was in pigtails (hot) and I just told her that I liked her hair. I was flirting a bit, but I can be a bit shy. I also don't have an approachable face and anything where I do stuff like this is a step in the right direction. I do need to do it more though. I actually did it earlier this semester. I had a thing for my physics lab partner and moved forward with it. Unfortunately, that ended Monday night. The good thing is that I put my profile up on match.com about 30 minutes later.

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http://trainingoferic.blogspot.com/

While I agree with most of what you write, I think the "When you stop looking and you will meet the right one" is a mental approach and not physical one. I think so many guys, and I think girls, tend to look at a date and wonder if this is "the one". Whereas it should be like you said that you are going out on a date to have fun.

I had been looking pretty seriously to find somebody for about 6 years when I "gave up". I still went to speed dating and tried to flirt with women when the opportunity presented itself but it was really just going through the motions. I met somebody I went to high school with at speed dating and since I had just started a new job we had all of two dates in the first 6 weeks after speed dating. Five months later after dating more seriously I new I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

I think getting rid of the mental block of being so serious when they meet somebody that they forget to relax, be themselves and have fun. If it works great, if not you had a fun time with somebody new. I have a friend that will absolutely not date more than one woman at a time. And I am not even talking about for weeks at a time, in his mind he cannot even do that on match.com with more than one woman at a time. He is so focussed on his list and seeing if "this one" is "the one" that it seems like he forgets to just have fun. He is an accountant so he gets it when I say the more women you see the more likely it is that you will find the one, but he just chuckles and ignores the idea.

45K is a lot of $$$ for someone who just does odd jobs.

Is it a crime that he lives with mom's and has no 401k?

Your friend sounds like a real bitch to ask him why any woman would want to date him, it's no wonder she has to go on the internet to get a man. LOL

Yes, I met my boyfriend online, and he isn't really quite as tall as his profile said he would be....but, he's sweet, introduced me to triathlon and thinks I'm sexy when I sweat, so really, what's a few inches taller? Besides, I think he really believes he's that tall. I just wear flats because my legs usually are too sore for heels anyway.

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"It's not just a daydream if you decide to make it your life"

Saw this thread and wanted to share my own experiences with online dating, from a few years ago.

I did it for two years when I was living in Portland (2002-2004), and found it to be both frustrating and entertaining, sometimes simultaneously. Never had anything pan out into a relationship or even a lasting friendship, but then again, went on far more dates in those years than I had in my entire life before that. One peculiar finding of mine: women would rarely respond to a message that was written specifically to them, referencing things in their profiles. What got the most responses were the obvious mass-mailings that I would do every now and again - a message sent to maybe eight or ten women, frequently saying something along the lines of "this online dating thing is stupid and frustrating, and I'm probably going to give it up for good if I don't hear back from somebody who isn't an emotional wreck or a weirdo." (I actually did mean it on the several times that I did it, and this sort of thing led to a good number of dates.)

I've been happily married now for almost two years, and I met my wife on Match.com. (Pics of the wife and me are on my profile, if anyone cares.) Funny thing is, we were writing back and forth for four months before we met, and on our first date we found out that we lived just a few blocks apart on the same street - and this isn't a really big town, either.

So yeah, the online dating thing can provide some entertainment, and sometimes can lead to something more. Turns out that my wife and I were both really into being creepy stalkers, so we hit it off right away, and now do all of our creepy stalking together.

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Over 4.5 years bike crash free.

That is beautiful. :P

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I know I'm promiscuous, but in a classy way

I love these stories.

BTW - ya can't git there from heyah.

(I grew up in NH)

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

WTF? I would think that sending personal emails would be better because that is the approach that I've been taking lately. So far 0/17!

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http://trainingoferic.blogspot.com/

Well maybe if you stop telling them your man card was revoked you might have better luck.

:P

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

Yeah, I could never figure it out either. I was in about the same situation (maybe somewhere around 0/15, or thereabouts) before I first tried the mass-mail approach and was taken aback by how effective it was. My only theory is that many women are still uncomfortable enough with the concept of online dating that anything that looks like a stranger being interested in them comes off as creepy and stalker-like. (This probably even goes for guys who don't put "being a creepy stalker" under their hobbies.)

I can definitely attest to the fact that there's a learning curve. Key seems to be making yourself look fun and interesting, but keeping it look as casual as possible. Anyway, once I'd actually gone on a few dates, online dating war stories became a fun topic of conversation with the women I was contacting.

There was a real upward progression, too. Had a fair amount of experience with the false advertising that women do on these things - the whole out-of-date photo, and "downsizing" their weights (often by very significant margins). I was really big on kayaking at the time, and had thought that it could be a fun date activity (second or third date sort of thing), but with several of these women, if you'd somehow gotten them into a kayak, you'd never get them out again.

Went from that sort of thing in the initial stages, on to dates that were decent but didn't pan out. Then I entered the higher stakes part of it, and met a few women I really liked, who unfortunately didn't feel the same. Took a break from the whole thing for a while. Moved in the meantime.

Tried again a few months later. My future wife's personal jumped right out at me - I re-subscribed to Match.com just to talk to her. She'd written some pretty funny stuff about having been stranded on a deserted island for days, and her annoyance that the bars were closed when she finally got back to civilization. (True story.) I got as far as sending her a wink before another woman made contact with me. This launched a short and intense thing with a much younger woman, and it ended pretty unhappily. By the time I made contact again with my future wife, she was going out with someone else. Was willing to correspond, still - that's why we were writing for four months before we finally met.

So she broke up with the other guy, and we finally met. About an hour into the date, we were both thinking that it wasn't going very well. Things did start to improve, however, and we were both much more optimistic by the twenty-eighth hour of the date.

Don't know whether any of that rambling story is at all helpful, other than to demonstrate that sometimes there can be a good outcome after an unpromising beginning. Despite your sig line, perhaps a little patience is in order.

Oh, and one other piece of hard-won advice: don't go out with social workers, even if they're really hot.

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Over 4.5 years bike crash free.

Ouch, that hurt!

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http://trainingoferic.blogspot.com/

Sorry, bad day. It was an easy shot and I took it. I'll be nicer, I promise.

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Jen

"In order to keep a true perspective on one's importance, everyone should have a dog that worships him and a cat that will ignore him." - Dereke Bruce

Hey, it's OK. The truth hurts sometimes. ;-)

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http://trainingoferic.blogspot.com/

Thanks for the info. I'm going to change tactics soon. That is a cool story about how you met your wife. And I can understand about social workers.

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http://trainingoferic.blogspot.com/

Hey Eric,

Since the farting every 17 second does not seem to be working for you, here's an idea that has worked for me, once.

I wanted to go to the museum the following day and was single so I put an ad on Craigs List (M4W not Casual Encounters) asking who was up for a fun day in the city.
I said what I wanted to do, have lunch and then go to the museum.
I got one response in less than a half hour. I pulled the ad down. We met and had a great time and ended up dating for almost two years.

Now I wonder why I have unrealistic expectations of online dating.

Yeah, back before my bike crashes, it was the dates with social workers that were the big running joke.

(I post this with some degree of trepidation, having never posted on The Womens before this thread. Will I get flamed for picking on social workers? Or does flaming not happen in this forum? Anyway, at the very least I'd recommend not dating the social workers I went out with.)

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Over 450 days bike crash free. And over four years date-with-social-worker free, also.

what is with the social worker dates? A good friend of mine is a social worker and she is quite nice, is she the exception or something?

I thought we agreed not to tell anyone how we met!

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Awww, Katy's not all THAT evil. Only slightly evil. In a good way. - JasoninHalifax

My mom's a social worker, asshole. Maybe you should stay out of the womens from now on.

KIDDING! She is a social worker, but she's crazy as fuck so I totally agree hahah :)

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I know I'm promiscuous, but in a classy way